Although it hasn’t always been this way …
Breasts. Even just saying this word conjures up so many feelings.
When I was young, intimate body parts like breasts were never discussed with family or friends. There was a slight air of embarrassment around it, and from this I interpreted that breasts were definitely something to hide and not talk about.
When I started growing them I pretended they didn’t exist. I did not feel they were anything to be proud of and I chose to believe that breasts were acknowledged and flaunted only for sex.
At 15 I became very thin but my breasts were still apparent, so I used every way to make them flat.
I did not want to show that I was a woman and I did not want to grow up.
Later on, breasts became the centre of attention with intimate partners but only in the privacy of the bedroom. I found this intriguing, as why would breasts appear to be so adored when I could not feel much connection to them myself and did not find them special at all? It would have been blasphemy to show any cleavage in public, which even if I attempted, did not happen without deep self-flagellation first.
Later, when I became a mother, I chose to believe that my breasts did not belong to me anymore. I felt an obligation to give them away solely to the care of my child, and ironically in consequence of this being my own choice, I resented myself and my son.
In more recent years, with the support of Esoteric Women’s Health, I began to uncover some of the pictures I was holding onto about what being a woman means and what breasts truly mean to me. I learned to feel into whether these pictures were true or not, and how they influenced my relationship with my breasts.
I discovered that the reason I did not like my breasts very much while growing up was because most of the pictures I had of what I believed breasts to be were not true. The pictures that I was told of what being a woman is were not true either.
By exploring the multitude of pictures and beliefs I had taken on, such as:
- a woman is never good enough
- she has to be sacrificing for her family and/or man
- a woman is to be subservient,
- she has to do everything on her own, or can’t do anything at all …
… I came back to truly feeling and connecting with myself as a woman by deeply caring for myself again.
I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety in 2012 after not being able to sleep for more than a month. That was the year when I became deeply honest with myself and began to listen to the very clear messages my body had been giving me all along but I had been ignoring until this point. My body had become very fragile, I had lost a lot of weight and had no energy at all. So I began tending to my fragile self as if I was a new born baby. I slept when I was tired, ate when I was hungry, walked every step in deep gentleness.
In a recent mammogram, I discovered there were micro-calcifications in my breasts, and realised I had to further change and deepen my movements in honouring and respecting myself as a woman.
I came to understand that how to truly be a woman is something which I know innately, but have allowed myself to be led away from by all the pictures I have acquired imposed upon us by society. I found that the true authority and sacredness of a woman is always and has always been within me, and as a result of this awareness my breasts have grown to have a whole new (but actually not new at all) meaning for me.
I now love my breasts not because someone else loves them or wants to own them, not because flaunting them got me likes and not because of their size or appearance. I love my breasts purely because I can now feel them in a way I never imagined possible. When I feel touched by another’s gesture, words or genuine love and care they tingle and expand, when I contract, withdraw from others and life, they harden, when I accept any form of abuse no matter how latent and ‘insignificant’ on the surface, they become painful.
My breasts show me all my vulnerability, they express all of my tenderness and sensitivity, they reflect to me who I am as a woman and all of my choices as well as my potential.
Re-developing my relationship with my breasts is an ongoing journey but this gradual and natural expansion of enjoying myself as a woman with breasts again, is a true joy to behold and feel.
by Adele Leung, Woman, Fashion Stylist, Writer, Photographer, Model and then some, Hong Kong
You may also Enjoy:
Who is a woman’s greatest nemesis? The media? Men? Or could she be her worst enemy? … Who creates the image of women?
One woman decides to claim back a relationship with her breasts. How, you might ask?
What on earth does it mean to have a relationship with one’s breasts and why would a woman want one?